Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)

VAKANÜVİS- Uluslararası Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi/ International Journal of Historical
 Researches, Yıl/Vol. 6, Sayı/No. 1, Bahar/Spring 2021 ISSN: 2149-9535 / 2636-7777

    Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan
                      (1985 to 1991)
                             Sevket Hylton Akyildiz*
                            (ORCID: 0000-0001-9545-4432)

         Makale Gönderim Tarihi                        Makale Kabul Tarihi
              04.01.2021                                  29.03.2021

                          Atıf Bilgisi/Reference Information
Chicago: Akyildiz, S. H., “Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan
(1985 to 1991)”, Vakanüvis-Uluslararası Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi, 6/1 (2021):
01-35.
APA: Akyildiz, S. H. (2021). Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan
(1985 to 1991). Vakanüvis-Uluslararası Tarih Araştırmaları Dergisi, 6 (1) , 1-35.

    Abstract
    This paper assesses the modern and traditional sports of the Soviet Union
shortly before its collapse in 1991. The case study is the Central Asian republic
of Uzbekistan under the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU,
established 1917). Central Asia is a crucial historical case because it was a
Muslim-majority region that Moscow wished to transform. The study is
interdisciplinary and contains primary and secondary sources from the Cold
War era. The research question asks: What did the implementation and impact
of Soviet sport look like in Uzbekistan under Mikhail Gorbachev (CPSU leader
from March 1985 to December 1991). Uzbekistan’s sportspeople, facilities,
Spartakiad ranking of 1983, Olympic athletes, and traditional sports are the
topics examined.
   Keywords: communist sport, Gorbachev, Soviet sport, traditional sport,
Uzbekistan.

* PhD, SOAS, University of London, Languages and Cultures Department, United
Kingdom. sevket.akyildiz1@gmail.com.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                              2

    Introduction
    The British academic Shirin Akiner said: ‘In the mid-1980s, the
political climate in Central Asia was very much as it had been ten years
previously. The Communist Party apparatus was firmly in place.’ She
reports that the Soviet Union, in the mid-1980s, appeared to offer, ‘…
progress and stability, equality of opportunity for men and women, and
education for all’.1 However, Akiner continues with her analysis,
reporting that between 1985 and 1991, politics and society changed
remarkably. All of the state institutions were effected, first by
Gorbachev’s reforms and then by national independence in 1991.
During Gorbachev’s reforms, everyday practices, like sport, were looked
at anew as state ideology underwent reappraisal.
   Events at the time moved fast; on the 25 December 1991, Moscow
and the Soviet republics, after failing to reach an agreement about a
reformed multinational socialist federation, dissolved the Soviet Union.
The Central Asians, therefore, responded with astonishment and hopes
for the future.
    Given this, our paper looks at the final six years of Soviet sport before
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s reforms of the late 1980s
impacted on the Soviet institutions and Soviet culture. Since the mid-
1920s, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had used its
version of modern culture, incorporating physical culture, to integrate
and acculturate the Muslim Central Asians. This paper will assess the
modern and traditional sports culture in Uzbekistan between 1985 and
1991, when Gorbachev was the communist leader (from 1985 to 1991).
At first, he continued with existing Soviet sports policies, but, during
perestroika (the restructuring of the economic and political systems,
circa 1986 to 1991), he permitted increasing commercialisation and
privatisation in the sports sector. It was the most radical shift in Soviet
sports since the 1930s. The paper touches upon perestroika and sport;
however, our primary focus is the general state of Soviet sport culture
in Uzbekistan after 70 years of communism. We will assess the
implementation and impact of sport in Uzbek society during the late

1Shirin Akiner, Central Asia: New Arc of Crisis? London: Whitehall Paper Series, 1993,
p.20.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                       3

Soviet era. Also discussed is the condition of traditional or folk sports,
and we consider why it remained popular for the Central Asians.
    Unfortunately, due to the word limit, this paper will not discuss the
following critical sports-related topics: athletes with disabilities;
performance-enhancing drug-taking, corruption involving athletes and
coaches; the close working relationship between the communist youth
movement (the Komsomol)2 and athletes; widespread criticism of the
elite athletes’ privileges; Central Asian women and sport.3 However, a
discussion about Uzbekistan’s elite women athletes is included in the
section on the Olympic Games medal winners.
   Uzbekistan was selected as the case study because it contains the
largest population among the Central Asian republics (approximately 18
million people in 1985), and its capital of Tashkent was once the fourth
largest Soviet city (population nearly 2,000,000 in 1984).4 By 1989

2 A unionwide youth movement for citizens aged 15 to 28. The Komsomol was an
extracurricular youth organisation whose function was to raise young people to be
‘good communists’. Its facilities and services were broad, and it played a key in youth
sport at all levels. The Komsomol took instructions from the CPSU. See also Seth
Bernstein, Raised Under Stalin. Young Communists and the Defence of Socialism. Ithaca,
NY & London: Cornell University Press, 2017.
3 I have summarised Central Asian women and sport in Sevket Akyildiz, ‘Modern and

Folk Sports in Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin: Uzbekistan from 1925 to 1952’,
Vakanuvis—International Journal of Historical Researches, 4, no. 2, (Fall 2019), 515-541,
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/vakanuvis/issue/48884/595032 (accessed 4 Nov
2020); see also Sevket Akyildiz, ‘Cultural Change in Central Asia: Brezhnev, Modern
Sports, and Memories in Uzbekistan, 1964 to 1982’, History Studies: International
Journal     of     History,    12,     no.   1,    (February    2020),       p.    35-54,
http://www.historystudies.net/dergi//cultural-change-in-central-asia-brezhnev-
modern-sports-and-memories-in-uzbekistan-1964-to-1982202003798d093.pdf
(accessed 4 Nov 2020).
4 Shirin Akiner, The Islamic Peoples of Soviet Union. London: Kegan Paul, 1983, p.274-

75; Shirin Akiner, ‘Uzbekistan: Republic of Many Tongues’, in Language Planning in the
Soviet Union, ed. J.M. Kirkwood. Macmillan: London, 1989, p.103. William Fierman
explores the total population in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan: ‘These republics contain approximately one-fifth of the
USSR's population. As of 1979, almost 29 million (62 per cent) of their 46.2 million
inhabitants were members of "Muslim" nationalities.”’ William Fierman, ‘Western
Popular Culture and the Soviet Youth: A Case Study of “Muslim Region”’, Central Asian
Survey, 7, no. 1 (1988), pp.7-36, p.7.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                                   4

almost 1.6 million Russians and other Slavs had settled in Uzbekistan’s
cities to assist with Soviet modernisation and acculturation.5
    The introduction and development of modern sports in Central Asia
is thought-provoking because, in 1917, the citizens were mostly rural,
religious, and ethnically diverse. Uzbekistan is perhaps the most robust
case of modern sports expansion and success in the former Soviet
Central Asia, with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan following
up behind. In contrast, Tajikistan displayed the least progress.
   Moreover, for the Soviet planners, Turkic and Muslim-majority
Central Asia was a crucible to trial the Soviet modernity and identity
formation. It was a geographic region, far enough from Moscow,
considered suitable by the regime to implement its social control
systems and economic transformation. Indeed, it is no accident that the
creation of Uzbekistan during 1924 and 1925 happened simultaneously
as the CPSU introduced the newly established communist socialisation
channels. These included the unionwide education system, physical
culture and sport, secular civic rituals and ceremonies, and the youth
movements (the Young Pioneers for ages 10 to 14, established 1922,
and the Komsomol for ages 15 to 28, established 1918).6
    About ideology and bias, we need to make clear the problem with
Soviet statistics in both the primary and secondary sources. In Central
Asia, falsification of statistics occurred when local cadres attempted to
please Moscow and meet official planning quotas. Also, Soviet
researchers and writers interpreted society from a Marxist-Leninist
perspective; this probably prejudiced their works and statistics
reporting. For this reason, the Soviet-era published books in the English
language are not an accurate picture of events on the ground;
nevertheless, they are useful sources to help us generally understand
the Soviet sport development and how the regime wished to present
itself to the non-communist world. Another point that makes writing
about Soviet sport problematic is the limited number of published
English works about Soviet sport in Central Asia. For this reason, the
archives in Tashkent and Moscow require a visit from a researcher with

5   Akiner, Central Asia: New Arc of Crisis?, p.73.
6   Akyildiz, ‘Modern and Folk Sports in Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin’, p. 517.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                    5

the necessary Russian and Uzbek language skills to investigate the
documents available and explain Soviet era sport in Central Asia.
   The primary sources used in our research paper are documents of
the Cold War. Many Soviet documents have been translated into English
and are available online through the Joint Publications Research Service
(JPRS) Arlington, Virginia, United States. They contain select
information from Soviet newspapers and agencies, and Communist
Party publications. JPRS documents provide us with the Soviet
perspective and discuss the social and economic development of
Central Asia. The book Soviet Sport: The Success Story (1987),7 published
in Moscow for a Western audience, contains descriptive information on
Soviet sport. It makes many unsubstantiated claims about the positive
development of Soviet sport but fails to mention performance-
enhancing drug-taking, corrupt officials, cheating by athletes, and the
insufficient sports facilities for rural dwellers. Different Cold War-era
works consulted include the British published Let’s Visit Uzbekistan
(1988),8 and the Soviet published Uzbekistan (1987)9 and Uzbekistan
Questions and Answers (1987).10
    Our research’s secondary sources are British, European and United
States studies published during the Cold War and the post-Soviet era.
James Riordan’s publications (1980, 1988, 1991, 1993) are helpful
starting points about Soviet sport and result from Soviet Union
fieldwork notes, Soviet newspaper stories, and Soviet and Western
literature. Riordan explains the evolution of modern and traditional
sports in the Soviet Union with insightful and non-biased observations.
Other Western texts provide us with discussion on the broader themes
of Soviet modernity and culture: Michael Rywkin (1990)11 critically
focuses upon the colonial and authoritarian nature of the Soviet Union,
while Akiner (1993) researches the complexity and nuances of the
relationship between Moscow and Central Asia. The edited book

7 A. Timofeyev, and Y. Kopytkin, Soviet Sport: The Success Story. Moscow: Raduga
Publishers, 1987.
8 Frances Wilkins, Let’s Visit Uzbekistan. London: Macmillan, 1988.
9 Gulhammid Sobratee, Uzbekistan. Moscow: Novosti Press Agency, 1987.
10 E. Khodjayev and V. Mizhiritsky, Uzbekistan: Questions and Answers. Tashkent: 1987.
11 Michael Rywkin, Moscow’s Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia. Armonk, New York:

M. E. Sharpe, 1990; Michael Rywkin, Soviet Society Today. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1990.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                                6

Euphoria and Exhaustion: Modern Sport in Soviet Culture and Society by
Nikolaus Katzer, Sandra Budy, Alexandra Kohring, and Manfred Zeller
(2010)12 explains the current European thinking about the Soviet sports
question. Susan Grant’s Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society:
Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s
(2013)13 uses archival research and contains a chapter about the rural
citizens and the non-Russian minorities.
    In part one, ‘Theory and Concepts’, we will define Soviet modernity
and culture and the relationship between Marxism-Leninism and
physical culture and sport. In the section about ‘Gorbachev’s reforms
1986 to 1991,’ we review perestroika and glasnost (the open discussion
of political and social issues). An explanation of how perestroika
impacted sport follows. In part two, we discuss sports implementation
in Uzbekistan between 1985 and 1991. The topics evaluated are Uzbek
society, the rural-urban divide, the sportspeople, and the sports
facilities in the republic. In part three, we analyse the impact of Soviet
sport in Uzbekistan; the topics outlined are Uzbekistan’s Spartakiad
ranking (a unionwide sports competition held in Moscow every four
years),14 Olympic athletes, and the continuity of traditional sports. A
final section briefly comments on the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the former Soviet athletes’ performance at the 1992 Summer Olympics
in Barcelona.

   Theory and Concepts
   Soviet modernity: culture and physical culture
   The world’s first communist government formed after the 1917
Russian Revolution. The Bolshevik communists were motivated by
Marxism-Leninism; this ideology justified their state power seizure and

12 Nikolaus Katzer and Sandra Budy and Alexandra Kohring and Manfred Zeller,   Euphoria
and Exhaustion: Modern Sport in Soviet Culture and Society. Frankfurt: CampusVerlag,
2010.
13 Susan Grant, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation,

and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s. London: Routledge, 2013.
14 The Spartakiad included Olympic and non-Olympic sports. The elite athletes are

selected for the Olympic Games teams; however, the Spartakiad event involved millions
of amateur athletes from across the Soviet Union.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                         7

legitimated their political authority. They claimed the role of political
vanguard leading the masses (the dictatorship of the proletariat). Their
official policy was to build a workers’ society of equal citizens and the
fair distribution of natural resources, goods and services. The final point
of this was a utopia: a society said to represent pure or full communism.
All Soviet citizens, regardless of ethnicity, would share, through
universal education and indoctrination, a unionwide civic identity and
culture.15
   In this model, ‘Soviet modernity’ meant transforming the pre-1917
social order into a scientific-atheist communistic society. Religion and
traditional culture, dynastic rule, rural life and premodern agriculture,
kin and regional communities are replaced with science, popular
sovereignty, the nation-state, citizenship, and up-to-date work
practices—this ‘modernisation’ comprised of rationalisation,
industrialisation, bureaucratisation, and urbanisation. Stalin’s social
interventionist method, after 1928, was top-down and sought to
transform the multinational Soviet Union forcibly. In doing so, most
bourgeois and upper classes, religious believers, and ethnic nationalists
were labelled the ‘enemies of the people’ and imprisoned or murdered
by the communist regime.
   The ‘Soviet culture’ was one strand of the Soviet modernity project
and devised to integrate and help control the citizens regardless of their
ethnicity, gender, or age. In the Soviet Union, physical culture always
existed in a symbiotic relationship with modernisation, socialisation,
indoctrination, and mass entertainment. For instance, modern sports
were a supposed remedy to religious belief, alcohol consumption,
prostitution, and crime.16 Stalin’s Cultural Revolution, 1928 to 1931, was
to accelerate replacing traditional cultures in the republics. Central Asia
typified the pre-industrial, conservative, and guild based society ripe for
modernisation in the central planners’ eyes. In particular, Central Asian
culture and society were viewed by Moscow as ‘backward’,

15 See Sevket Akyildiz, ‘“Learn, learn, learn!”’ Soviet style in Uzbekistan: Implementation

and planning’, Social and Cultural Change in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy, ed. Sevket
Akyildiz and Richard Carlson, London: Routledge, 2014, p. 11-31.
16 James Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education

in Russia and the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980, p.7.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                                8

superstitious, and patriarchal.17 Edward Said writes that ‘This twinning
of power and legitimacy, one force obtaining in the world of direct
domination, the other in the cultural sphere, is a characteristic of
classical imperial hegemony.’18
   The origins of Soviet values and norms, universal literacy and
education, costume and material life, intellectual and artistic works, and
town planning and architecture are found in Europeanised Russian high
and popular cultures. Its name was Sovietisation. The Russian language
became the official language (known as Russification). In the context of
the Soviet nationalities policy and in creating the Soviet people (Sovetski
narod), the acculturation channels (including sport) were to ‘bring
together’ (sblizhenie) and ultimately ‘merge’ (sliyanie) the Soviet
nations into one communist society. Nonetheless, national traits would
remain; ever since the 1930s, elements of the national costume,
architectural styles, and traditional sport were incorporated into the
Sovietisation process.19
    The roots of physical culture are in nineteenth-century Europe and
society's industrialisation, urbanisation, military training, and
nationalism. During the 1930s and 1940s, Stalin looked to Western
development patterns, and physical culture was one of many foreign
borrowings that the CPSU would re-engineer to suit its ideology. In the
Soviet form, says Grant, physical culture ‘covered a wide spectrum
ranging from hygiene and health issues to sports, defence interests,
labour concerns, leisure, education, and general cultural
enlightenment’.20 The CPSU reports that it consisted of four
components: ‘organised physical education, playful activities, active
leisure pursuits and sport’.21 The centralised physical culture formed a
key role in urban living and the identity of the Soviet citizenry. The CPSU

17  See Ali F.Igmen, ‘The Emergence of Soviet Houses of Culture in Kyrgyzstan’,
Reconstructing the House of Culture, ed. Brian Donahoe and Joachim Otto Habeck. New
York: Berghahn, 2011, p.163-188.
18 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage, 1994, p.291.
19 Sevket Akyildiz, and Richard Carlson, Social and Cultural Change in Central Asia: The

Soviet Legacy. London: Routledge, 2014.
20 Susan Grant, Physical Culture and Sport, p. 1.
21 Entsiklopedichesky slovar’ po fizicheskoi kul’ture I sportu, Vol. III (Moscow, 1963),

p.226, cited in Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society, p. 4.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)        9

advanced organised leisure and a healthy lifestyle to create energetic
citizens for work and the army. The Ready for Labour and Defence
Programme was established in March 1931 and included diet and
health, fitness routines, public hygiene, physical education and sport. In
this paper, ‘modern sport’ denotes sports’ rules and codes, clubs and
services, sportspeople and athletes, coaching and training staff,
spectators and fans. We refer to modern aquatic sports, ball games,
combat sports, equestrian sports, field and track sports, martial arts,
racket sports, and snow sports. Riordan says: ‘Organised sport is
regarded as a playful, competitive physical or mental activity, based on
rules and norms, with the object of achieving a result.’22
    Central Asian and Russian folk sport had roots in communal
gatherings, military-training, and work-related strength training. In
societies undergoing modernisation, folk sports survive if they remain
linked with group identity. Included in folk sports are wrestling, martial
arts, archery, and equestrian sports.

      Reforms 1986 to 1991: perestroika and sport
   During the 1980s, after 60 years of centralised government and a
command economy, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc republics
faced a cycle of significant economic and social crises. The military
withdrawal from the Soviet-Afghan War (1979 to 1989) raised a
question about Moscow’s strategic aims, while the Chernobyl nuclear
energy disaster (26th April 1986) produced a cloud of pollution that
spread beyond the borders of the Soviet Union into Western Europe.
    In an attempt to reform and perpetuate the communist system,
Gorbachev implemented glasnost and perestroika and included anti-
alcohol, anti-bribery, and anti-corruption campaigns. His reforms
commenced in 1985 when he had implemented a policy with the slogan
(uskorenie) to speed up political, social, and economic development.
However, during perestroika, the new political milieu encouraged the
criticism of corrupt state officials to make communist politicians and
senior apparatchiks (CPSU members) more accountable to the Soviet

22   Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society, p.3.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                        10

people. While in the 15 Soviet republics, Gorbachev replaced the older,
conservative-minded CPSU leadership with younger, more dynamic
colleagues. The economic reforms were to reduce government debt and
partly liberalise the economy. At the national and republic level, the aim
was to foster a more dynamic society and promote individual initiative
and entrepreneurship. The planned savings from reducing military
spending would go to healthcare, welfare, and cultural projects.
   The Soviet citizens and nations, after decades of state-sponsored
cultural repression and denied liberal freedoms, began to voice their
concerns about the authoritarian-bureaucratic nature of the party-state
model. Also, the non-Russian peoples started to discuss their national
interests and ‘constitutional rights’ openly.23 Optimism was in the air,
and the Slavic and Central Asian people were growing more confident
to articulate their cultural and social grievances, and in some cases, at
local council meetings, political demands were directed at Moscow. At
the time Rywkin said about Gorbachev’s reforms: ‘What will be more
interesting, though, is whether Soviet society can develop a language of
real political discourse.’24 The unfolding and collapse of the Soviet Union
between 1990 and December 1991 are noted below in part three.
    Change of cultural policy was not a new phenomenon in the Soviet
Union; it was present since Stalin’s Cultural Revolution. However,
perestroika's introduction made permissible a wave of sports policies
that were more far-reaching than anything since the introduction of the
Labour and Defence Programme in 1931. It was the most significant
revision of physical culture management for nearly 55 years in Russia
and Central Asia. The bureaucratic and functionalist element of sports
culture was reduced and replaced by the partial economic liberalisation,
involving commodification, commercialisation and professionalisation
of athletes. It started the de-regulation of the centralised sports system,
increased self-regulation of sports clubs, and the self-financing of
leisure services.

23 Rafis Abazov, Culture and Customs of the Central Asian Republics. Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood, 2007, p.49-50.
24 Rywkin Soviet Society Today, 1990, 182. See Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of

Communism. London: The Bodley Head, 2009.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                       11

   The policy of free or low-cost access to sports facilities ended for the
masses as the managers of gymnasiums, swimming pools, sports
centres, and stadiums introduced, or increased, entrance fees. In 1987,
co-operative sports ventures and health clubs opened. In the same year,
the eight top trade union sports societies underwent a reorganisation
to ensure that sport-for-all was a priority.25
   Newly permitted sports, like golf and baseball, created new
opportunities for some sportspeople and entrepreneurs, but they also
challenged the established state-controlled sports model.26 The new
sports contained individualistic, monetisation and gambling
components that could weaken the significance of Soviet values at a
personal and societal level. In reality, the traditional horse races had
remained part of the folk games in Russia and Central Asia throughout
the 70 years of Soviet rule, as did gambling.27
    Perestroika happened at a moment when the state-managed sport
increasingly lost relevance in the lived reality of Soviet youth.
Generational change revealed that youth with no experience of the
Second World War hardships (the Great Patriotic War 1941-45) had a
different mentality to their parents and required a tailored youth
culture policy. The youth viewed the Ready for Labour and Defence
Programme – the bedrock of the Soviet sport culture –, and the
Komsomol youth movement as out-of-date.28 Young adults, particularly

25 Jim Riordan, ‘Playing to New Rules: Soviet Sport and Perestroika’, Soviet Studies, vol.
42, no. 1, (January 1990), pp.133-145, pp.133-34. Riordan said the: ‘The mood of
glasnost appears more to favour sport for all than special privileges for the gifted,
pp.139-140. In fact, back in 1981, the CPSU leader Brezhnev said that sports schools and
clubs should not only cater only for the elite athletes but broaden their membership in
the local society.
26 Riordan, ‘Playing to New Rules’, 140. The sports of golf, baseball, Grand Prix motor

racing, American football, snooker, darts, billiards, bodybuilding, dog races (and horse
racing), recently imported from the United States and Western Europe into the Soviet
Union, had a distinct commercial flavour.
27 Riordan, ‘Playing to New Rules’, 1990, 141-41. Horse racing had always continued in

Russia and Central Asia under the Communist Party but had not been acknowledged so
by the authorities.
28 Sports leisure consumption changed in the 1970s and 1980s as families increasingly

chose to remain at home to view their sports on television rather than participate in
stadiums and clubs’ collective culture. Source: Abazov, Culture and Customs, p.250.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                                  12

in Russian and Central Asian cities, began establishing unofficial and
semi-official sports, leisure and cultural groups, clubs, and venues.
Increasingly they were drawn to Western popular youth trends.29 In
response, Gorbachev allowed them to run independently from the
Komsomol and acknowledged the appeal of Western popular music,
fashion, and sports.3031 He also permitted native cultural groups and
leisure clubs to operate self-reliantly.32
   Nevertheless, in 1989, both the Soviet Union and Soviet sport,
despite social upheavals, were thought by many Soviet citizens and
Western observers to continue. Rywkin understood that the Soviet
Union was a complex and contradictory society and that Gorbachev’s
reforms had unleashed national and religious aspirations within the
Soviet republics, still, about sport, Rywkin says: 'The future of Soviet
sport looks bright. It is popular, financially well supported, with good
training facilities, large numbers of eager participants, and mass
audiences. Its athletes will profit if the current relaxation permits them
to enter more worldwide events and gain recognition abroad.’33

29 Jim Riordan, ‘Soviet Youth: Pioneers of Change’, Soviet Studies 40, no. 4 (October
1988), 556-72. Fierman reports that in Komsomolets Uzbekistana (15 September 1984)
the Komsomol, in combating Western products, printed the Soviet imagery on mass-
produced clothing, sporting goods, and tote bags for the domestic youth. Fierman,
‘Western Popular Culture and the Soviet Youth’, p.25.
30 Riordan, ‘Soviet Youth: Pioneers of Change’, 556-72, Riordan writes that students at

schools, colleges, and universities were given a greater say in their choice of sports
activities.
31 Gorbachev’s sport policy impacted on women in terms of equal access to sport.

Before Gorbachev, despite official statements about gender equality, Soviet women
athletes were prohibited from water polo, ice hockey, boxing, football, martial arts,
weightlifting, bodybuilding, and wrestling. The CPSU said these sports were not suitable
for women because of biological, physiological, and social reasons. Gorbachev, changed
this policy to enable female athletes to participate in all sports. Also, before Gorbachev,
Soviet athletes with disabilities were excluded from representing their country in sport.
After 1986, Moscow accepted that its athletes with disabilities could represent the
Soviet Union, and a team participated at the Seoul 1988 Summer Paralympics. Riordan,
‘Playing to New Rules’, 1990, p. 136-37.
32 Riordan, ‘Soviet Youth: Pioneers of Change’, p. 556-72.
33 Rywkin, Soviet Society Today, 1990, p.167.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                      13

     Implementation: Uzbekistan’s sportspeople and facilities
    To explain Soviet sports culture in Uzbekistan during the late 1980s,
we describe the republic’s population profile and society. Following on
is an outline of the rural-urban divide in modern sports development.
The focus then shifts to discuss the numbers of sportspeople in
Uzbekistan and its built sports environment.34 We are examining the
numbers and types of athletes and the breadth and nature of
Uzbekistan's sports facilities.
    The Uzbeks are Turkish-speaking people, Turkic by race, and majority
Sunni Hanafi Muslim. Uzbekistan’s total population between 1924 and
1985 grew from almost 5 million to 18 million people. During this time,
ethnic Uzbeks formed about 70 per cent of Uzbekistan’s total
population. In Uzbekistan, ethnic Tajiks form large communities in
Bukhara and Samarkand. Since 1924, Uzbekistan was a multicultural
society that included other Soviet nations like the Russians,
Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Tatars, and several of Stalin’s deported peoples
resided in the republic. Interethnic marriage, urbanisation, and radical
secular upbringing influenced the Uzbeks’ self-identification and the
other ethnic groups.35 The Russian settlers had first arrived in the region
in the late nineteenth century after Central Asia had become part of the
Russian imperial empire. During the Soviet era, more than 1.6 million
Slavic people arrived in Uzbekistan as professionals and technical staff
to assist with the Sovietisation of Central Asia and reside in a warm,
sunny climate.
   The CPSU, for financial reasons and to socialise the greatest number
of citizens, concentrated its cultural management policy on cities and

34  Jim Riordan has investigated the building of Soviet sport in Central Asia and
Uzbekistan from 1920 to 1982, Sport in Soviet Society (1980); see also Sevket Akyildiz in
‘Modern and Folk Sports in Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin: Uzbekistan from 1925
to 1952’ (2019); ‘Cultural Change in Central Asia: Brezhnev, Modern Sports, and
Memories in Uzbekistan, 1964 to 1982’ (2020).
35 Sevket Akyildiz, ‘Sport has become the privilege of the millions’: Physical culture in

Uzbekistan 1924-1991, Proceedings of the XII Biennial Conference of the European
Society for Central Asian Studies: Central Asia: A Maturing Field, University of
Cambridge, ed. Alexander Morrison and S.S. Saxena. Cambridge, Cambridge Scientific
Publishers, 2016, 2; see also Viktor Kozlov, The Peoples of the Soviet Union. London:
Hutchinson, 1988, p.2.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                              14

urban centres. Since the 1920s, Moscow’s goal was to encourage the
Soviet Union’s rural majority population to migrate to the cities
internally. The regime found this problematic in Central Asia; for
instance, between 1917 and 1991, the Uzbeks, through choice,
remained a mostly rural population. The Uzbeks’ urban and rural
distribution, and the other Central Asians, indirectly challenged the
communist modernisation agenda. Almost 81.7 per cent of the Uzbeks
within Uzbekistan were rural in 1926; in 1970, it reduced to 77.0 per
cent.36 The urbanisation in Central Asia was also slow because the rural
population’s natural birth rate was high. The rural-urban divide in the
Soviet Union and Central Asia meant that Soviet development and
modernisation spread unevenly across society. However, after the
Second World War, Central Asia’s key urban centres increasingly
resembled the Russian and Ukrainian cities.37
   In physical culture and sport, this policy meant less spending on
sports infrastructure in the rural districts. Indeed, throughout 70 years
of Soviet physical culture and sport, the rural towns and villages, in
contrast with the cities, had fewer facilities, inadequate funding, and
lacked expert sports personnel.38 Modern sport culture was less
available than in urban centres. The large regional town of Ferghana,
approximately 420km east of Uzbekistan’s capital city of Tashkent,
might have offered some modern sports institutions and services.
However, outside of the regional centre, the majority population of
Ferghana Oblast (an administrative region within Uzbekistan) did not
experience the complete socialisation and health benefits of physical
culture. In this agricultural region, traditional sports were popular
before the 1917 Revolution, which continued to be the case afterwards.
The Uzbek Central Committee Commission report (July 1989) mentions
weakness in modern sports implementation – ‘One third of the schools

36 Shirin Akiner, The Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union, p.277.
37 See Paul Stronski, Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966, USA: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2010).
38 Susan Grant, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society, pp. 99-123. In the 1930s,

Grant writes: There were also more fundamental problems with the GTO and the GTO
officials in the regions and provinces… [in the state farms] GTO instructors lied about
their qualifications, exaggerated norm statistics, forged norm cards…’, and instructors
lacked authority among the locals. p.39.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                      15

are in unfit buildings: half of them lack athletic facilities and
auditoriums, standard cafeterias; 70 percent of them are operating on
two or more shifts. Only 44 percent of the rural population is equipped
with water pipelines … The network of children’s preschool institutions,
physical culture and sports facilities, and health care facilities is not
developed fast enough.’39
    Modern sportspeople within non-Western societies generally
indicate that a sports culture has either been promoted by a
government policy or imported by individuals (like business people) and
the self-organised sports societies. The numbers of amateur athletes
reveal politicians’ seriousness to make the citizens healthier and fitter
for work, enjoyment, and national defence. While the elite athletes
highlight the level of sports excellence a society has achieved. The
following examines the numbers of amateur and elite athletes in Soviet-
era Uzbekistan. It is a good indicator of the regime’s investment in sport
and its Labour and Defence Programme, and sports' mass popularity. To
do this, we have used Soviet statistical data about sportspeople and
facilities, as there are no equivalent Western sources available. As we
mentioned above, the reader needs to be cautious of the bias and
unreliability of Soviet data. Despite this, and in consideration of the
primary and secondary evidence, the Soviet sources provide us with a
general working picture of modern sport in Uzbekistan under
Gorbachev.
   One Soviet secondary source published for a Western audience is
Soviet Sport: The Success Story (1987); it reports: ‘About six million
people regularly engage in physical fitness programs and sport in

39 Report of the Uzbek CP Central Committee Commission, ‘On the Tragic Events in
Ferghana Oblast and the Responsibility of Party, Soviet, and Law Enforcement Organs’,
18300786b, Tashkent Pravda Vostoka, 30 July 1989, cited in USSR Report (15 November
1989) Soviet Union Political Affairs, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Springfield,
Virginia,    United      States      of    America,     JPRS-UPA-89-060,       p.     45,
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a346350.pdf (accessed 7th Aug 2020). In the
summer of 1989, the above report was produced in response to local Uzbeks street
fighting with the Meskhetian Turk community over state resources in the Ferghana
region. To protect the latter, Moscow airlifted the Meskhetian Turk minority to new
homes in towns outside of Uzbekistan.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                                16

Uzbekistan.’40 Let us consider this claim, in 1985 we know the total
population in Uzbekistan was almost 18 million people, and
predominantly young, so the figure of six million sportspeople might be
plausible if all teenage and adult citizens, regardless of their skills and
rural or urban location, are classified as participants.41
    Furthermore, Soviet Sport: The Success Story highlights that each
year: nearly two million citizens of Uzbekistan attained the physical
fitness certificate; almost 1,820,000 ‘athletes’ gained a mass sports
ranking (with 19,000 receiving the first ranking badge); 5,000 athletes
qualified for the title of Candidate of Master of Sport, and 300 athletes
achieved Master of Sport status. These are the highest sports training
and achievement awards in the Soviet Union.42
    By looking at the 1980s sources, it is fair to say that modern sports
culture operated in urban Uzbekistan. The Western secondary source,
Let’s Visit Uzbekistan (1988), published in London for an English-
speaking audience, is not a comprehensive examination of sport, and,
in the climate of the Cold War, it might have been subject to a degree of
(self-)censorship by its editors. Indeed, the Soviet Union was a closed
society, and many Western researchers found it difficult to visit because
of visa restrictions. As a consequence, they would have relied upon the
information that the CPSU shared with them. Still, the book, Let’s Visit
Uzbekistan highlights the breadth and scope of modern sports and
recreational pastimes in the republic at the time. The book mentions
activities that most sports studies about Soviet-era Central Asia have
ignored, such as winter sports, hunting and fishing, and
mountaineering. While its content is just a snapshot of the topic, it
reinforces the argument that by the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet sport
culture was well established in the urban-centres of the Soviet
periphery. Moreover, the book’s author Frances Wilkins highlights the
normality of Soviet sport in everyday life: ‘Football is very popular with

40 Timofeyev, Soviet Sport, p.58.
41 Kozlov, The Peoples of the Soviet Union, 38; See also Akiner, Central Asia: New Arc of
Crises? p.74. Akiner notes that 16.7 million Uzbeks resided in Uzbekistan in 1989, the
‘below working age range’ was 42.9 per cent, while the working age (16-65) was 49.2
per cent.
42 Timofeyev, Soviet Sport, p.58.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                    17

boys, who even play it indoors when the ground is covered with snow in
the winter. Basketball and volley-ball are also popular, and tennis is
gradually beginning to be played, although there are still not many
courts. Winter sports are also popular almost everywhere. These include
ice-skating (often in open-air), ski-ing and tobogganing. There are now
also a few ice-hockey teams in Uzbekistan, as ice-hockey has been a
favourite sport in various other parts of the USSR for a great many
years.’43 Tennis courts appeared in Tashkent during perestroika, but
tennis was a niche sport that required self-funding and access to private
resources. Times were changing, as tennis had been dismissed in the
early 1920s by the Bolsheviks as individualistic and bourgeois.44
    Rural and outdoor sports were popular too; this makes sense in a
mostly rural population. Though fishing, mountaineering, and hunting
with a modern weapon are not strictly classifiable as traditional or folk
games. However, each of these originates in traditional sports and
leisure: military preparedness, stamina training and royal hunting
parties.45 Wilkins says, ‘Fishing is very popular in Uzbekistan, particularly
with boys. They fish in nearly all the rivers and lakes, mainly for perch,
roach, pike and chub. Mountaineering has always been a favourite sport
in Uzbekistan. There are mountaineering clubs both for young people
and adults in all the mountainous areas. Other people like to go out with
a gun, although they do not usually manage to shoot anything more
exciting than a few hares or pheasants.’46
   The building and development of the sports facilities, physical
education and training sites commenced in the late 1920s; however,
after Hitler attacked Russia, Ukraine and Crimea in 1941, it was paused.
After Germany's surrender in 1945, the Soviet Union emerged as a
superpower—testing an atomic bomb in 1949 on the Kazakhstan
Steppe. It was the moment that the Cold War emerged between the
Soviet Union and the Western powers, played out in proxy wars,
economic rivalry, and the cultural sphere. For instance, Moscow re-

43 Frances Wilkins, Let’s Visit Uzbekistan. London: Macmillan, 1988, pp.90-91.
44 Dr. Shirin Akiner, SOAS, University of London, Master of Arts seminar, Spring 2000.
45 See Akyildiz, Modern and Folk Sports in Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, pp.522-

24.
46 Wilkins, Let’s Visit Uzbekistan, p. 91.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                              18

invested energy and resources into expanding physical culture and
sport. Sports were a soft power tool for the East and West throughout
the Cold War era.
    All categories of sports infrastructure and services opened to cater
to popular demand and a growing local population.47 The CPSU
promoted sports culture, and sports continued to grow at amateur and
elite levels in Soviet society between 1950 and 1985. Indeed, the
modern sports facilities were a visual and physical presence on the
cityscape to say that the socialist lifestyle was a reality. In the Soviet
book Soviet Sport: The Success Story, Uzbekistan’s built sports
infrastructure of the late 1980s appears plentiful. We can assume that
the government statistics given below include dedicated sports sites, all
school and college sites, and factory and farm sports facilities. These are
the official figures given: 175 available stadiums, 3,000 gyms, 50
swimming pools, 2,400 shooting ranges and galleries, and 40,000
football pitches. Twenty thousand sports specialists and 642,000
volunteer coaches worked at approximately 12,000 physical fitness and
sports collectives. The 642,000 volunteer coaches mentioned in the list
probably include teachers, general assistants, and parents.
Furthermore, nearly 4,000 sites, such as educational institutions,
factories, and farms, provided daily morning exercise sessions.48 The
provision of sports sites mirrored the perestroika reforms allowing new
sports. A special children’s baseball school existed in Tashkent; by 1988,
30 baseball clubs operated in the Soviet Union.49
    The CPSU used the expansion of modern sports culture to showcase
its success in terms of ‘progress’ and acculturation. The infrequent
Western visitors to Central Asia received official tours of local sports
sites; for instance, the March 1984 tour of Uzbekistan by British socialist
and writer John Summer included an official visit to Chimen Winter

47 Akyildiz, ‘Cultural Change in Central Asia: Brezhnev, Modern Sports, and Memories in
Uzbekistan, 1964 to 1982’.
48 Timofeyev, Soviet Sport, p. 58.
49 A. Bezruchenko, ‘Soviet Baseball Moves on from First Base’, Soviet Weekly, 30 April

1988, p. 14, cited in Riordan, ‘Playing to New Rules’, 1990, p. 140.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                      19

Sports Complex.50
   Despite these developments, it is worth noting that in terms of
stadium-size, the Soviet Union did not compare favourably with the
developed Western states. Can we say the authoritarian regime was
worried about crowd control? Particularly when large numbers of
excitable male spectators, perhaps from different ethnic backgrounds,
gathered together at football matches?51 After all, football hooliganism
was an issue in the late European Soviet Union era. Even by 1991, the
Soviet Union had only eight stadiums with a seating capacity greater
than 50,000. These stadiums were at Moscow, Leningrad, Tbilisi, Erevan,
Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Kiev and Minsk. In contrast, in the same year, in
California (United States), nine college stadiums with a seating capacity
of 50,000 existed.52

     Impact: Spartakiad ranking, Olympic athletes, traditional sport
   The impact of Soviet sports culture on Uzbek society and the Soviet
Union was notable in cultural change and mass participation. It also
gave Uzbekistan recognition within the federal state and
internationally. The elite athletes and teams’ success helped strengthen
the Soviet civic identity and sense of belonging among citizens. To
explain this further, we look at—Uzbekistan’s Spartakiad ranking of
1983, the Olympic Games athletes, and the continuity and popularity of
the traditional sports.

50 S. Vahobov, ‘English Writer Gets Acquainted with Life of Our People’, Tashkent
Ozbekiston Adabiyoti Va San’ati, 30 March 1984, p. 7, cited in USSR Report (21 August
1984) Political and Sociological Affairs, Soviet Southern Republics, Foreign Broadcast
Information Service, Springfield, Virginia, United States of America, JPRS-UPS-84-073, p.
72 (Author’s personal copy 2020, source: https://discover.dtic.mil).
51 Rywkin mentions one football fan riot in 1969 between Uzbeks and Russians in

Tashkent, p.119.
52 Robert Edelman, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR. Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1993, p.160; see also Akyildiz,‘ “Sport has become the privilege
of the millions” ’, Riordan, cited in Brown, Archie, and Michael Kaser and Gerald Smith,
The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.498.

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                                   20

    By the 1980s, Uzbekistan’s sports institutions and coaching centres
had been in existence for several decades. The sports sites, working in
collaboration with the higher education institutes and the Komsomol,
selected and prepared the athletes to compete against the best
opponents from Russia, the Baltic republics and Ukraine.53 Riordan says
that since 1972, Uzbekistan was a middle-ranking nation in Soviet
sports.54 The Spartakiad of the Peoples ranking is a useful indicator of
the progress made by each Soviet republic in 1983. On the eve of
Gorbachev’s new role as CPSU leader, Uzbekistan athletes had already
achieved recognition and status in Soviet domestic sport. The Uzbek
athletes’ sports team won sixth place at the 1983 Summer Spartakiad.55
The Soviet Union consisted of 15 republics, so the sixth position means
that Uzbekistan remained a middle-ranking sports nation. B.
Allamuradov, the first secretary of Uzbekistan’s Komsomol, spoke in
January 1984 about the importance of physical culture for young people
and the need to build on recent achievements – ‘One of the chief
directions of our work is the training of physically strong young people
with great endurance. The possibilities for improving the quality of mass
physical culture and fitness work are constantly expanding in the
republic. A confirmation of this is the sixth place position which was
taken by our command at the VIII Summer Spartakiad of the Peoples of
the USSR.’56 Riordan notes the early effects of perestroika and the
growing scepticism towards state sport. He reports that the 1986
Summer Spartakiad ‘passed off in a low-key fashion with no

53  The Uzbekistan Institute of Physical Culture was at U1, Achunbabaeva 6, 1-a,
Tashkent, SSR.
54 Akyildiz says, ‘… by 1972 Uzbekistan was classified as a middle-ranking sports republic:

Georgia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and Russia had 190 or more participants per 1,000 people;
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Estonia had 160 to 180
participants
per 1,000 people, while Azerbaijan, Lithuania and Latvia had “between 129 and 145
participants per 1,000 people”.’ Source: Riordan, Sport in Soviet Society, 307, in Akyildiz,
Cultural Change in Central Asia Brezhnev, Modern Sports, and Memories in Uzbekistan,
1964 to 1982, p. 45.
55 B. Allamuradov, ‘Educate Patriots’, Tashkent Pravda Vostoka, 21st January 1984, p. 3,

cited in USSR Report (29 March 1984) Political and Sociological Affairs, Foreign
Broadcast Information Service, Springfield, Virginia, United States of America, JPRS-UPS-
84-030, p. 80, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA371939.pdf (accessed 4 Dec 2020).
56 Ibid.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                      21

participation figures for the first time since the Games were held in
1956.’57 The Olympic Games also saw Uzbekistan’s athletes achieve
success and maintain a standard comparable with the other Soviet
republics.
   The Olympic Games provided the CPSU with a platform to present its
form of socialist modernity to a global radio and television audience.
The achievements of the multi-ethnic Soviet athletes at the Summer and
Winter Olympic Games gave the communist regime status in world
sports culture. The CPSU used its medal-winning athletes for
propaganda purposes to show the vitality and health of the communist
society. Back in Central Asia, the internationally recognised Central
Asian athletes became heroes and icons of the Soviet people; their
industriousness and teamwork were examples of Soviet values.58 The
regime’s idealogues manipulated the impact of a local Uzbek or Tatar
Olympic medal-winner on impressionable young Uzbeks or Tatars. The
winning athlete’s face and body appeared on cinema news stories, on
Young Pioneer and Komsomol magazine covers, and classroom posters.
Indeed, athletes became role-models for children and teenagers to
emulate, and their values and behaviour were something that even
adults could acknowledge as conforming with Soviet behavioural
norms.59
    Ever since the Soviet Union Team’s first appearance at the Olympic
Games, Uzbekistan athletes won medals. Two Uzbekistan residents
participated in the Helsinki Olympic Games of 1952: the Uzbek, Galina
Shamray (women’s rhythmic gymnastics) won gold, while Russian
Sergey Popov participated in athletics.60 In the spirit of collectivism,
retired athletes would be re-employed by the sports system as coaches

57 Riordan, ‘Playing to New Rules’, p. 134.
58 Dean Allen, ‘“National Heroes”: Sport and the Creation of Icons’, Sport in History 33,
no. 4 (December 2013): 584-94; see also Hassan, David, ‘Introduction: What makes a
Sporting Icon?’, Sport in History 33, no. 4 (December 2013): p. 417-26.
59 Jenny Brine, Maureen Perrie, Andrew Sutton, Home, School and Leisure in the Soviet

Union. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1980.
60 Further examples are listed in International Olympic Committee (Uzbekistan):

‘Uzbekistan’, The Olympic Movement, 2015, http://www.olympic.org/uzbekistan
(accessed 4 Dec 2020); see also National Olympic Committee of Uzbekistan,
http://www.olympic.uz/en/ (accessed 4 Dec 2020).

Sevket Hylton Akyildiz                                                           22

to train the next generation of medal winners. Despite the difficulties of
living in an authoritarian-run society, these athletes show that a working
relationship was possible between sportspeople and the CPSU, and both
Soviet patriotism and international socialist friendship could be
generated, even in the peripheral, less-developed Soviet regions.61
    The involvement of Uzbekistan’s athletes at the Olympic Games was
dependent upon Moscow. During moments of tense politics between
Moscow and Washington, the Uzbekistan athletes stayed away from
international sports events. David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton explain
how the 1980 Summer Olympic Games (Moscow) fell victim to the Cold
War antagonism between the communist East and the liberal-
democratic West. These authors say, ‘Moscow put on an extravaganza
to demonstrate the sporting and economic power of communism but the
intended audience didn’t show up, as the USA decided to boycott the
event following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.’62 In response, the
communist regimes shunned the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los
Angeles (United States). These included the Soviet Union, East Germany,
the Eastern Bloc communist regimes, Iran, Libya, South Yemen,
Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. Goldblatt and Acton say: ‘While the
communist nations staged a tit-for-tat boycott, La-La land mobilised its
corporations and the magic of the movies. This was the first Olympic
Games to make a profit, amidst a riot of sponsorship and Venice Beach
glamour.’63 Two years later, Gorbachev introduced perestroika and the
partial commercialisation of the Soviet sports system.
   The clash of ideologies continued. The communist states of Cuba,
North Korea, Nicaragua, and Albania boycotted the 1988 Summer Seoul
Olympics Games (South Korea). However, the Soviet Union team did
participate. Uzbek gold winners were Muharbek Khadartsev and Arsen
Fadzaev in wrestling. Both had graduated from the Uzbekistan State
Institute for Physical Culture in Tashkent. Other Uzbekistan residents

61  Sevket Akyildiz, ‘Olympic Culture in Soviet Uzbekistan 1951-1991: International
Prestige and Local Heroes’, Polyvocia—The SOAS Journal of Graduate Research 3 (March
2011), 1-16. https://www.soas.ac.uk/sjpr/edition-3/file67219.pdf (30 Nov 2020).
62 David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton, How to Watch the Olympics (London: Profile,

2012), p.387.
63 Ibid.

Sport in Central Asia under Gorbachev: Uzbekistan (1985 to 1991)                 23

had success: Rodion Gataulin won silver in pole-vaulting, and Nail
Muhamadiarov won silver in wrestling. Sergey Zabolotnov competed in
the medley relay 4х100m swimming, winning bronze.64
    Stories about the Uzbek champions were published and widely read
in the unionwide sports press (Sovetsky sports newspaper). They
became household names and a talking point for people in the
workplace. It was another sign of how Soviet culture had taken root in
the Uzbek society; it also impacted local publications and the acquisition
of Russian and foreign words into the Uzbeks’ everyday language usage.
Since the 1930s, with the introduction of universal education and
Russian as the state’s official language, Russian and European sports-
related loan words (futbol, tennis, billiards, sport, medal) formed part of
the new lexicon for the Turkic-speaking Uzbeks. Locally published sports
literature contained sports news as well as moral and political
propaganda. The Uzbekistan Athlete (Fizkul’turnik Uzbekistana) had a
circulation of 101,000 in 1973.65 The written word was supplemented
during the 1970s and 1980s by Soviet television broadcasts of
international sports events.
   Traditional sports remained common and were actively pursued in
the rural regions and during national holidays everywhere. Despite
several decades of CPSU social engineering and interventionism, it was
the case. As mentioned above, most Uzbeks lived, through choice, in
the rural and middle-sized towns of Uzbekistan. How can we explain
traditional sports’ continuity in a hard-line socialist society that sought
to make all citizens modern and progressive? Firstly, traditional sports
were permitted to continue because the communists lacked the
finances to build gymnasiums and sports halls in every Central Asian
town and village. The regime utilised local educational sites and
workplaces to fill the sports provision gap. In comparison, the urban
centres and cities, the sites of socialist modernity, received the funds
and personnel necessary to establish the modern sports culture.
Secondly, the traditional sport was homogenised and institutionalised
by Stalin and the CPSU; this enabled the regime to (re-)produce national

64Akyildiz, ‘Olympic Culture in Soviet Uzbekistan 1951-1991’, p. 13.
65N.N. Shneidman, The Soviet Road to Olympus: Theory and Practice of Soviet Physical
Culture and Sport. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979, pp.166-67.